The delivery of letters is getting worse and worse in Germany, the number of complaints will double in 2022. The sick leave is high. Union representatives hold Deutsche Post's personnel policy responsible for this. At the beginning of the year, they did not extend thousands of contracts.
In view of thousands of complaints about the delivery of letters by Deutsche Post, criticism of the group's personnel policy is growing. "The postal service misjudged the situation on the labor market," said Thorsten Kühn, head of postal services at the Verdi union, the "Spiegel". At the beginning of the year, Swiss Post is said to have let 7,000 temporary jobs expire because the number of letters and parcels was at times significantly lower than in the same period last year.
Since the increase in corona cases within the Post workforce in the spring, the group has hardly been able to find a replacement for the many failures and departures, says Kühn. "As a result, shipments have been left behind, and delivery districts have temporarily failed."
The specialist trade union DPVKOM criticizes that the postal staff is already sewn on edge. Long-serving employees are now leaving the company of their own accord, said DPVKOM national chairwoman Christina Dahlhaus to the "Spiegel". "This leads to an unbelievable burden and intensification of work." Employees from temporary employment agencies are to help out temporarily in some post offices. Annoyance causes parts of the workforce that some temporary workers earn more money than the employees of the post office.
The Federal Network Agency has received more than 37,000 complaints about postal companies so far this year, twice as many as in the previous year. A large part of the complaints relate to the delivery of letters by the post office.
According to the German Association for Post, Information Technology and Telecommunications (DVPT), which represents large senders such as companies and authorities, a large number of business letters are on the road for two or three weeks. "That's not acceptable," said DVPT board member Klaus Gettwart to "Spiegel".
In the meantime, the Post is also trying to find additional staff with the help of its own workforce. Thanks to a program that promises employees bonuses for recruiting new staff, the group claims to have gained more than 4,000 additional employees so far.
